`Unreasonable' food regulations criticised

Unreasonable and unjustified food-safety regulations are putting small food producers out of business, Ms Darina Allen has told the National Safety Authority of Ireland's annual conference in Dublin.

Speaking yesterday at the NSAI "Food Safety from Farm to Fork" conference, Ms Allen, owner of Ballymaloe Cookery School, said it was, "silly to the point of folly on a grand scale" to think the same regulations could be applied to industrial food production plants as to the small-scale producer.

Ms Allen was referring to the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) regulations, an international system which requires all food businesses to follow a rigid set of safety procedures.

Ms Allen said the HACCP regulations were overly prescriptive and "utterly devoid" of common sense. "It is absolutely crucial that our regulations are proportionate to the size of the risk," she said.

She stressed that she advocated a high level health safety, but added: "It is vital that we do not create a climate which discourages top-quality food producers."

Ms Allen was also concerned that the regulations were not being directed at the source of primary production. She said that when the Food Safety Authority was set up in 1996 its brief was to monitor the industry "from farm to fork".

However, she said, a change in government had led to a change in emphasis and the legislative concern for food safety was "being left at the farm gate".

"The production process at primary level can and does make the difference between safe and hazardous food." She said the increase in intensively produced food, particularly chicken and pork, was leading to food contamination and this was "necessitating food hygiene laws that would be quite unnecessary if the food was safe in the first place".

Mr Fergal Quinn, the senator and chief executive of Superquinn, told the conference that consumers also had responsibility for ensuring the safety of the food they ate. "The food chain does not stop at the supermarket shelf."

He said retailers must get involved in the education of their customers. "You're not in business if there is a doubt about your food safety."